As gorgeous and serene as the locales look, however, something is quite wrong. The crew is missing, and Miranda seems to be trapped in a time loop. Does it have something to do with VESTA, the new world discovered by the station? Probably.

For the time being, Miranda needs to investigate the station for any clues, be it journals or logs, and carefully examine the environment. Among the more logical puzzles, including repairs and realignments, are those that require messing with gravity. Some solutions may not even be solvable in that loop, instead providing solutions for the next.

Rivage is coming to PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC, so we won’t have to wait long to solve its mystery. A free demo is available on Steam, and though progress won’t carry over to the game, it provides an hour’s worth of gameplay to get a better idea of what to expect (aside from pretty visuals).

Why? Well, because he has issues with both the human world and the beast realm, which players can seemingly traverse back and forth between. Many of the same mechanics from the original return, though, including the ability to record beasts and fuse them for powerful new combinations.

With more than 250 beasts and even online support – not to mention a much bigger scale with its fully 3D environments – Cassette Beasts 2002 certainly looks like it’s going to one-up its predecessor. A release date would be nice, but if you’ve never had the chance to play the original, now is as good a time as any.

With over 1.1 million units sold and extensive critical acclaim, Cassette Beasts stands out as one of the best games in the genre. The base game is currently on sale on Steam at 65 percent off until June 21st, alongside the DLC, Pier of the Unknown, for 60 percent off.

This one is a survival exploration adventure that lets you bring up to two friends to, well, a dungeon, that’s going to have you looking for every advantage you can get against its many threats. You’re going to be picking up ingredients that you can then use to craft food items that, in turn, feed your stats. What you cook decides what you can do, so you’re going to have to find as many ingredients as you can if you want to prepare yourself for a variety of situations and come out on top every time.

Fortunately, the dungeon has a lot of places to explore for you to achieve the ultimate goal of crafting the Deep Dish Pizza, a recipe that the trailer below touts as the answer to all your problems. Well, a pizza’s always a good thing to have in any crisis. Deep Dish Dungeon is coming to the Xbox Series X|S and PC alongside Game Pass this Fall.

Runegate is similar in many ways – the foundation is clearer and certainly less obfuscated. The characters, including your own, feel far more established, and while exploration still has that segmented feel with some samey objectives, it’s more organic. Like you’re slowly but steadily uncovering this vast world with unique factions, but also characters with their own interesting side stories and dilemmas. It’s one thing to read about a developer wanting to take what they made before and improve it in every single way. That doesn’t necessarily make this a remake, though. If anything, Runegate is more of a revisit – a reshaping but also an expansion, one that I didn’t think would immediately grab me as it did.

"These connections between activities feel seamless, whether you’re carrying out objectives as simple as slaying wolves for a Raven Clan desertee and his family, or happening upon a mercenary who can squad up with you."

As before, you’re part of a Dwarven clan in a world that isn’t exactly all that thrilled about your existence. And while that’s outlined well enough, the circumstances are much different, jumping in right after a brutal ambush by goblins. It’s all you can do to recoup, check on the survivors, and so on. However, there’s also a mysterious structure called a Runegate underground, seemingly leading to another world. After the goblins reappear, there’s no choice but to jump in, re-emerging in the remains of the Rivenbrook Camp to rebuild. Then you’re off to Otam, a completely different world but one that’s still subject to the same dangers.

Because you have no idea what it holds, you’re essentially spending food to navigate your wagon around, unfogging the map and discovering new points of interest. There might be a location where someone needs your help in rescuing their brother. Perhaps you’ll come across a scholar who’s investigating some ruins, and by solving the puzzle, you obtain some old writings that must be translated. A base to the north holds the Rockwardens, where you can find two merchants to add to your camp when not taking on quests to hunt goblins (which then leads to a cave where an artifact hunter needs your help in return for some goodies and a grey tabby cat).

These connections between activities feel seamless, whether you’re carrying out objectives as simple as slaying wolves for a Raven Clan desertee and his family, or happening upon a mercenary who can squad up with you. Some PoIs definitely feel isolated, serving as little more than the means to recruit newcomers or earn some cash, but Regions of Ruin toes a fine line in how often they’re doled out.

As you help out people and gradually unearth more information about the world – and how your kin have fared – you’ll obtain resources to expand on Rivenbrook. There isn’t any hands-on base-building – spend whatever is required, and then spend some more for upgrades. Nevertheless, it creates a pretty addictive gameplay loop, especially as workers join your cause and start passively generating resources. You could embark on an excursion, hunting down goblins, exploring caves, and gradually collecting resources, to then return and spend it all in the camp for, say, a storehouse or a blacksmith upgrade that lets you enchant weapons and armor. Or even a refinery for producing finer metals, or even a fishing spot for passive food generation (the same currency spent for exploration).

"And it’s saying something that for as free-form as the plot can be when choosing your own path, it can also deftly loop back around to your clan and their rebuild while unearthing more details about the world and the Dwarves as a whole."

In between all of this, however, you’re also fighting, and admittedly, this is one area where Runegate isn’t the most fluid. The fundamentals are easy enough to pick up – light slash, block, heavy attack from holding down the light attack button, dashing, and so on. But facing directions, especially relative to the mouse pointer, takes some getting used to (and I didn’t especially like the alternative option). When you’re facing off against a few enemies, it shouldn’t be all that problematic; it’s when you’re swarmed by smaller foes, or reinforcements arrive from above, that things can feel a little awkward.

Even if the targeting was on point, movement can also be a bit clunky. The responsiveness of landing attacks and heavy strikes is fine, as is dashing away from any attacks that could severely injure you. It’s just the jumping attacks which don’t feel as finely hued, even though that’s technically more realistic. Regardless, once you recruit more allies and start getting into bigger battles, combat can become quite enjoyable, especially with the sheer number of weapon choices. You could frontline, blocking attacks and chaining stuns on enemies, or hang back and slowly but surely whittle them down with a crossbow. If you want to leap into the fray and start swinging with a two-hander, well, have at it. Just don’t be surprised when all those arrows aimed at your frame stick there until they’re pulled out.

The sheer number of skills to unlock that all lean into specific playstyles feels nice, whether you’re stacking bleeds or shield-bashing through multiple foes. Some battles can occasionally get repetitive, mostly due to the kinds of enemies that you’re facing, but it’s to the game’s credit that it often spices up the circumstances. One scenario could involve escorting someone back to the entrance of a mine and dealing with an ambush from goblins; another could see a giant Troll working with a gaggle of the same foes (even if it doesn’t present the greatest challenge).

And it’s saying something that for as free-form as the plot can be when choosing your own path, it can also deftly loop back around to your clan and their rebuild while unearthing more details about the world and the Dwarves as a whole. In that regard, the writing isn’t half-bad either, whether you’re dealing with Clip Lucky Shot and his plan to use you as a meatshield or joshing that artifact hunter.

"As much as it isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel, much less present the most complex of systems (though make no mistake – there’s plenty of depth to sink your teeth into), it succeeds in the one way that matters most: Taking everything about the original and making it bigger and better."

As for the presentation, Runegate still offers a 2D pixel art style like its predecessor, but it’s more finely detailed. The overall aesthetics and architecture convey a weathered civilization, one that suffered its fair share of hardships and harsh weather. And yet, even in a place like Rivenbrook with its various wreckage, there’s a vibrancy throughout. During the day, sunlight pours in, almost blinding you, while at night, the stars are out, and lanterns light up to subtly illuminate the surroundings. Various rocks and pillars offer their own uniquely colored glow. The music impresses with its emotional motifs, and the sound design feels appropriately grounded (barring some odd-sounding monster hits).

If you’re in the market for a side-scrolling action RPG and can deal with the various warts behind the combat, simply getting lost in the world and the lore surrounding it, then Regions of Ruin: Runegate is definitely worth playing. As much as it isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel, much less present the most complex of systems (though make no mistake – there’s plenty of depth to sink your teeth into), it succeeds in the one way that matters most: Taking everything about the original and making it bigger and better. It may not make the biggest impact on new players, but there’s enough heart here to win you over.

This game was reviewed on PC.

Released last year to universal critical acclaim, Blue Prince sees players venturing through Mt. Holly as the heir to a giant, mysterious mansion. If they can reach Room 46, the inheritance is all theirs – the only problem is that the mansion’s layout changes from day to day. You start with a choice of rooms in each run and must chart your way through.

Each room functions differently, from recovering steps to unlocking useful tools and currency. With each playthrough, you’ll discover more clues about the mansion. It’s even possible that the mystery doesn’t end after finding Room 46, but you’ll have to delve deep into its interiors to learn more.

Blue Prince is available for PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC alongside Game Pass and PlayStation Plus Extra/Premium. You can check out our review, where we gave it a ten out of ten for its unique gameplay mechanics, art direction and near-bottomless well of secrets.

It passed two million players as of September 2025, but despite its incredible reception, developer Dogubomb has no plans for a sequel.

Actually playing ROUTINE, however, instantly shows you where all of that development time and money went, since it’s essentially one of the most unique horror games to have come out in a while. Now, don’t get me wrong, there isn’t a lot happening in ROUTINE that we haven’t already seen in other games before. A lot of the gameplay is just slow-paced exploration and puzzle solving before you run into robotic enemies that you have to run away or hide from. What sets it apart from others, however, is its emphasis on making you feel your character’s body over the course of gameplay. To explain this, however, we’ll also have to take a more granular look at how it controls and plays.

"Just like how it wants you to be aware of all your body parts, the game also has an emphasis on having a more naturalistic UI."

ROUTINE isn’t exactly complicated when it comes to its controls. You get the WASD movement key cluster along with two important keys that affect how you control your body: crouch and lean. Holding down the lean button, as you might expect, lets you lean to either side. Unlike other games that also feature a lean button, however, ROUTINE also lets you use it with the forward or backwards movement buttons, which in turn let you stand on your tip toes or go fully prone to try and get your hands on things that might be in harder-to-reach places. While this might sound like a gimmick, the mechanics are used quite well throughout the game, since there aren’t really any objective markers or UI elements that let you know what you should be looking for.

Full-body awareness is a major gameplay aspect of ROUTINE, and just like how it wants you to be aware of all your body parts, the game also has an emphasis on having a more naturalistic UI. This means that you don’t really get a HUD where you might keep track of your CAT’s (we’ll get to that) battery level or your health. You don’t even get a button prompt for opening doors, in fact. Rather, you have to interact with computers to open doors, and this computer use takes a page right out of 2017’s Prey in giving you a real mouse cursor that you have to use to navigate the system. This adherence to not offering any “gameified’ elements like a HUD goes a long way when it comes to setting up the game’s overall atmosphere.

Speaking of which, one of the best things about ROUTINE is just how good it looks. Fidelity was clearly an important aspect of development, and developer Lunar Software did a phenomenal job of creating a moon base that looks lived-in. To accomplish this, the title goes for a very 1980s-inspired look for its in-universe technology. This means that, rather than having sleek flat screens, computer terminals are large kiosks with low-resolution curved CRT displays and big, blocky buttons. All of the technology is like this, including your own CAT – the Cosmonaut Assistant Tool – which also happens to be your primary method of interacting with the world aside from using computers.

"Going deeper into the base, like entering the living quarters, on the other hand, gives you a great idea of just how out-of-hand things have gotten here"

The visuals go a step further by offering plenty of fun contrast in the different parts of the lunar base that you explore. You start out in ROUTINE’s equivalent of its entry way, for instance, and while things are in disarray, there isn’t really too much wrong there aside from some suitcases being strewn open on the ground and a lack of anyone else in the vicinity. Going deeper into the base, like entering the living quarters, on the other hand, gives you a great idea of just how out-of-hand things have gotten here; there are broken-down doors and blood splatters all over the place. Heading to the abandoned mall will then present you with a more classical style of horror where light and darkness are more pronounced.

Audio is similarly top notch, with ROUTINE opting to not really have much in the way of background music. Rather, the title is more focused on providing you the sense of you actually being in the lunar base and exploring it. This means that you only really hear sounds that your character could feasibly hear, be it the creaking of a loose tile, the opening of a door, the clattering of a tiny robot walking around, or the heavier stomps of a larger robot chasing you.

The story of ROUTINE isn’t a particularly complex one, but it is told in a more twisted way than you might expect. There aren’t really any cutscenes that are going to help you figure out what’s going on. Rather, the entirety of the game’s plot is uncovered through the player’s own exploration and environmental storytelling. You often get large parts of the story beats happening through recordings left behind by other people who might have once lived and worked at the lunar base, and you’ll often find notes, forms, books, and various paperwork that will let you know what you should be doing and where you should be going.

"The central story is fine enough and does a great job of constantly pushing you forward"

Things start off with you waking up in the isolation chamber of the lunar base after having slept through your seven days of quarantine. On waking up, you’re prompted to stretch your body, get your spacesuit helmet and ID badge, and step out the door to marvel at the wonders of the moon base. What you do find when you step out of the door is a base that has seemingly been abandoned and is in complete disarray. Over the course of the game, you realise the threat posed by the robots that once worked as the lunar base’s security force, and have a singular main objective: shut down the system powering the robots.

While the central story is fine enough and does a great job of constantly pushing you forward, some of the smaller stories you get to read about or listen to through old recordings left behind tend to be a lot more interesting. These stories often also give you more questions that you will want to find answers for, like what exactly made the security systems turn on the lunar base’s human denizens to begin with, when all of this started, and even the most basic questions of why you’re on the base to begin with and how you can escape. However, answers to these questions are sparse, and are entirely dependent on your own sense of exploration.

To help you deal with this, you’re given a single item: the Cosmonaut Assistance Tool – the CAT – which is basically your omni-tool for dealing with most of the obstacles in your path. The CAT can be used to diagnose computers that might be too messed up to open doors, clear up the distorted signal coming from some speakers to let you better listen to an old message, or even just power up an electrical box so that it can open a door. This ability of the CAT to release bolts of electric energy can also be used as a makeshift weapon – albeit not a particularly good one. The robotic enemies you face in ROUTINE can’t really be killed with the CAT, and it tends to take several shots to even stun them. This is especially problematic since the CAT’s battery can only hold three shots, and you don’t really get to carry spares.

"What makes it a truly excellent experience is its emphasis on making you feel like you’re really there"

That’s not to say that the CAT can’t eventually become a more useful weapon, however. Depending on your own exploratory efforts, you might find some upgrades for the tool that can allow it to fire shots with more energy, making it a more effective way to stun the menacing robots. However, ultimately, your best bet is to still run away and maybe even hide; these robots will stop at nothing to get you, and you can’t really survive more than a single hit from them. A second hit will outright kill you.

ROUTINE is an interesting horror experience, and even if you ignore its incredible development story that involved two game engine migrations, is still one I’d recommend to fans of the genre. The title isn’t particularly challenging, and even though you don’t get any markers or maps to help you navigate, it’s still a fairly linear experience. However, what makes it a truly excellent experience is its emphasis on making you feel like you’re really there, be it from a general lack of a video game-styled UI, to even how you interact with the world and can do things like check under couches for a spare CAT battery. The only major downside here is the fact that the robot enemies’ overall hardiness means that combat isn’t really an option here, and while running around and hiding is always effective, it’s not the style of horror some players may personally enjoy. Despite that, however, ROUTINE still feels like a game I’m glad to have experienced.

This game was reviewed on PC.

But what happened over the course of the thirteen years since the game was first announced? How much has it changed in the process? What’s so special about it that has us quite excited to make it to at least one of its endings before the holidays are done?

We’re going to dive into all of that, showing you why this one’s worth your attention if you’re a fan of horror titles or games that get very immersive indeed. Join us as we examine a title that has been quite a pleasant surprise.

A Warm Welcome

When we first heard of Routine, it was at Gamescom 2012, and it seemed like a very interesting title at the time. It brought a lot of familiar elements from the best of media in the horror genre to a passion project that saw its lead designer, Aaron Foster, set out to bring his childhood passions together into an experience, and Lunar Software was born once he began to expand his team.

Taking place on the Moon, Routine puts you in the shoes of a nameless protagonist trying to piece together a series of events on a desolate base, braving sentient robots that seem quite insistent on preventing you from going any further. We’re going to dive into why it’s as good as we think it is in just a bit, but before that, let’s take a look at why it’s taken thirteen long years for the game to make its way to its players.

Although things were looking good for Routine following its 2012 announcement, it was hit by what would be the first delay in a long line of them. Nearly four years and multiple announcements of delayed release windows later, 2016 finally gave the game a March 2017 release date. We were as excited back then as we are now to play a game that looked so darn good in all of its promotional materials.

But another blow came to eager fans in April 2018, with the developers expressing dissatisfaction with the narrative’s endings, and further delaying the game’s release. With the team unable to agree on a mutually acceptable option, Routine would be on a very long hiatus until development would resume in 2020. With a lot of the funding for the project coming from within the team, financial constraints would also be a factor at this stage.

The game shifted to Unreal Engine 5 once its development resumed, a move that seems to be the right one based on our time with its early hours. The rest is now old news. The game was announced once again in 2022 at the Summer Games Fest and is finally in our hands.

Sci-Fi Scares

The desolate station you explore in Routine is quite a nasty place. But it’s also a world that’s been cleverly designed to balance scares with a good amount of interactive elements that make exploration a fairly unpredictable experience that does play it safe in order to ensure optimal balancing, but does a good job of keeping you on your toes nonetheless.

It took me a while to get into the habit of keeping my eyes peeled as I carefully made my way through the adventure. That’s because the station’s security system really doesn’t like you and sends its robots to remove you from the board. Although I was initially relieved to know that it could activate only one robot at a time, my elation was short-lived.

That’s because you never know when and where it could choose to activate a robot. Coupled with procedurally generated levels, that’s a recipe for a game of cat and mouse that decidedly places you in the latter role, and at quite the disadvantage. It’s enough to make the sound of robots’ thumping footsteps set your pulse racing as you try to find a way to safely mitigate the threat they pose.

With no HUD and permadeath being an ever-present problem that’s always a nagging thought at the back of your mind as you try to make sense of the world around you, Routine doesn’t shy away from defying mainstream traditions despite being the first release after a very turbulent period for the studio.

It’s clear in its vision, which is to present an unforgiving world that seems hell-bent on preventing you from uncovering the secrets it’s trying to hide. Even the tools it gives you in its attempt to even the odds require a lot of strategy to be effective against your enemies, and its limited battery capacity means you’re going to want to have a contingency plan in place whenever you decide to use it in battle.

However, Routine could have easily fallen prey to a frustrating loop of gathering enough supplies to make a run for your next objective, with failure resulting in some tedious farming as a result. However, the things you need to proceed are never quite far from you, but finding them requires some diligence on your part.

The gameplay loop in Routine is thus suitably tense and fraught with enough peril to make playing through the adventure a riveting, satisfying experience that’s helped along with some excellent art direction and creative flourishes.

An Unreal World

The Moon was always going to be the stage for this adventure, being an area of fascination for Foster and also a location that could convey a sense of loneliness and desolation in the wake of a series of unfortunate events that the player must uncover. While the jury is still out on how the story ultimately plays out, we’re certainly enjoying taking it one painstaking step at a time. But each of those steps feels so immersive thanks to the game’s retro yet futuristic art direction that really sells the material it’s working with. The enemy designs are also suitably impressive, the robots’ raw speed, size, and strength being evident in the way they toss your player around like a ragdoll if you’re unfortunate enough to let one catch you.

You truly feel vulnerable thanks to how well the experience is presented, the lack of any sort of indicators about your health being a superb touch that makes it all feel very real from moment to moment. On the presentation and visual fronts, this one is definitely a winner. The audio design is similarly good, with heavy silences being broken by the sound of your next encounter so suddenly you can’t help but jump.

The level design is another highlight, with enemies so cleverly hidden away, lying dormant until they are called upon to make your day as miserable as they can manage. It helps that said enemies are quite smart, hunting you down with unerring precision and invading hiding spots with clinical efficiency in their quest to put a premature end to your playthrough.

The entire vibe in Routine comes together quite well, making you feel like even the slightest of errors can have you on the backfoot since death comes with very real consequences. By choosing to make the gameplay loop as intense as it has, Lunar Software has crafted an experience that’s largely been worth the wait.

It makes you hold your breath as you carefully make your way past a dormant automated monstrosity, hoping against hope that it isn’t going to power up and give chase. Just when you think you’ve managed to get away with your espionage, you’re set upon by another, entirely new one that you failed to spot since its buddy was holding your attention.

It’s a game that feels like it’s been worth a thirteen year wait. And that’s saying something for a game that languished in development hell for so long. It’s rare for such titles to turn out okay, and for one to be as great and entertaining as Routine currently is, there were clever decisions made and implemented quite well.

Those decisions seem to have paid off, and we’re hoping that Routine continues to enthrall us as we take on more of its challenges and threats. We’re also wondering if 2025 has any more gems hidden under its sleeve as a year of great games draws to a close.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

According to Ros, this comes down to the fact that he is more interested in making something standalone. He noted that his next project might not even be in the same genre as Blue Prince. Through his works, we’ll also get to see some “overlap” in his different interests, which might lead to his next release having some similarities with Blue Prince, however.

“I can say I will never make a sequel to my work because I love creating something standalone and then going on to something completely different,” said Ros. “It will likely not even be in the same exact genres. I will probably be mixing it up. You’ll start to see overlap. You’ll start to see overlaps with some of my interests. So it will be familiar, and hopefully I’ll inadvertently have things that really worked with Blue Prince that I’ll carry on in terms of at least technicals.”

“But yeah, we’ll see. I’m hesitant to do another 3D game because for my first game, 3D was so difficult. I really wish I did a 2D game. I probably could have done it in five years instead of eight. But yeah, I think it’ll be something totally different.”

Blue Prince is a unique puzzle game that puts players in the shoes of Simon P. Jones who has been tasked with reaching the mysterious 46th room in a 45-room estate. The title revolves around players deciding what the next room should be when they open doors, which in turn then has the potential to reward players with currencies, keys, and help them figure out their next steps depending on how many unopened doors there are.

The plot of Blue Prince is rather unstated, and largely revolves around the legacy left behind by Baron Herbert S. Sinclair, who left Jones as the only heir to his estate on the condition that Jones discovers the estate’s secrets. The storytelling is largely achieved through notes left behind by previous visitors, as well as the general state of rooms when you find them.

The puzzle game is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, and was largely developed solo by Tonda Ros under the name Dogubomb with inspiration by classic illustrated puzzle book Maze: Solve the World’s Most Challenging Puzzle by Christopher Manson. In our own review of Blue Prince, we gave the title a score of 10 out of 10, praising its take on the puzzle-solving genre, striking visuals and great presentation that nails the smaller details.

“The unique take that Blue Prince offers on the puzzle and roguelike genres essentially stands on its own; there has simply never really been a game like it,” we wrote in our review. “The fact that its various puzzles don’t happen to be the kind that will have you start tearing your hair out also makes it an incredibly easy title to recommend even to those that might not really have too many puzzle games before.”

First announced in 2012, ROUTINE is a sci-fi survival horror where players venture through a lunar base filled with dangerous robots. That’s the same year that Borderlands 2, Far Cry 3, Mass Effect 3 and more launched, and almost all of them have received sequels (we don’t talk about Mass Effect: Andromeda).

What separates it from the likes of Alien: Isolation is permadeath. And just in case you think that trial and error through the same environments will save the day, there’s a bit of procedural generation at play. That also applies to the enemies, so you’ll never truly know where they’re coming from on any given run.

While there could be another delay, Lunar Software confirmed in July that development was approaching the “finish line.” It even released some new gameplay, highlighting the hacking mechanics and the importance of stealth.

ROUTINE will be available for PC, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox One on release. Check out our interview with the team from 2014 to learn more about its setting and compare how much it’s changed since.

These include DON’T NOD, Hooded Horse, Thunderful, Thunder Lotus, Serenity Forge, Skybound Entertainment, Raw Fury, Pathea, Wired Digital, poncle, and Cult Games. The appearing titles have yet to be confirmed, but we could see the likes of The Lonesome Guild and Aphelion, the former published by DON’T NOD and out later this month. The latter is developed by the same and launching in 2026.

Hooded Horse could showcase Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era, which was suddenly delayed to next year, while Serenity Forge may showcase its horror farming title, Fractured Blooms. How many of these will be available for Game Pass on day one? Time will tell, so stay tuned for more details.